The philosophers went as mad as the "quality" and critics. Quid noster Roscius egit was given by Cambridge University as the subject for Sir William Brown's prize-medal. Old "Gentleman Smith," the original Charles Surface, came up from Bury St. Edmunds, and presented him with a seal bearing the likeness of Garrick, and which Garrick, in his last illness, had charged him to keep only till he should "meet with a player who acted from nature and from feeling." Having found such actor, Smith consigned to him the keeping of the precious relic.
Then, if the overtaxed boy fell ill, as he did more than once, the public forgot the general social distress, the threats of invasion, war abroad and sedition at home, and evinced such painful anxiety, that bulletins were daily issued, as though the lad were king-regnant or heir-apparent.
Subsequently, Drury Lane and Covent Garden shared him between them. In twenty-three nights,[81] at the former house, he drew above £17,000, and this double work so doubled his popularity, that on one night, having to play Hamlet, the House of Commons, on a motion by Pitt, adjourned, and went down to the theatre to see him! This flattery from the whole Senate was capped by that of a single legislator; Charles Fox read Zanga to the little actor, and commented on Young's tragedy, with such effect, that the young gentleman never undertook the principal character.[82]
Except John Kemble and Mrs. Siddons, there was scarcely an actor of celebrity who did not play in the same piece with him, including Suett and Joey Grimaldi, who were the Gravediggers to his Hamlet. At the close of the season he passed through the provinces, triumphant, and returned to Drury Lane in 1805, to find "garlick amid the flowers," and a strong sibilant opposition, which he, however, surmounted, and again played the usual round of tragic heroes, carrying heaps of gold away with him to the country, where he easily earned large additions to the heap.[83]
But the London furore henceforth subsided. The provinces continued their allegiance for a year or two, but the metropolis no longer asked for, or thought of him. His last season was at Bath, in 1808; in the July of which year he entered Christ's College, Cambridge, as a Fellow Commoner; subsequently hunted in the vicinity of the Shropshire estate, purchased for him by his father, and became Captain Betty of the North Shropshire Yeomanry Cavalry.
So ended Master Betty! But, in 1812, his father being dead, Mr. Betty longed again for the incense of the lamps and the dear homage of applause, and he went through a course of provincial theatres, ending with a month at Covent Garden, with questionable success. His old admirers would have it that he was the English, as he had been the Infant, Roscius; but the treasury account told another tale, and Mr. Betty could only take rank as a respectable actor.
His name, however, was still a tower of strength beyond the metropolis; and, in country towns, the intelligent young man drew audiences still. In Edinburgh, Mr. Macready played Edward to Mr. Betty's Warwick; in which last character, after fitful appearances in the country, and acting for a single night now and then in London, as an additional attraction for a benefit, Mr. Betty took his final farewell of the stage, at Southampton, on August the 9th, 1824, being then but thirty-two years of age.
There can be no doubt of Master Betty having been the most "promising" young actor that ever delighted his contemporaries, and disappointed those that were to be so hereafter. His wonderful memory, his self-possession, his elegance of manner, his natural and feeling style of acting—all but his habit of dropping his h's, were parts of a promise of excellence. But his early audiences took these for a whole and complete performance. He was master of words but not of ideas, and in his boyhood was imperfectly educated. He could learn Hamlet in three or four days, and, no doubt, he played it prettily; but to play prettily and to act masterly, are different things. Hamlet is no matter for a boy to handle. Betterton acted it for fifty years, and, to his own mind, had not thoroughly fathomed the profoundest depths of its philosophy even then. Master Betty commenced too early to learn by rote; and the habits he then formed never permitted him to study as well as learn, by heart. The feeling and the nature, for which he was once praised, were those of a boy; they kept by him, and they were found weak and nerveless in the man. But therewith he reaped a large fortune, and he has prudently kept that too. May the old man long enjoy what the young boy, between natural abilities and the madness of "fashion," earned with happy facility.
There remains but one name more of exceeding greatness to be mentioned,—that of Edmund Kean; but, ere we let our curtain fall on him, I have to notice something of the manners, customs, sayings, and doings of a past time, which differed greatly from that in which Kean was reared, flourished, and fell. Let us glance at that olden period before we summon him to occupy our final scene.